The figures released by TNS, a market survey firm, showed that in 2010-2011, Vinacafe led the coffee market, followed by Nestcafe and Trung Nguyen’s G7. However, there would be some changes with the second and third positions, as the owners of the brands have been “bent on winning at any costs.”

It’s tit for tat

The three biggest brands have been competing with each other fiercely by making heavy investments in technologies, plants, lowering sale prices and offering sales promotion campaigns. Meanwhile, the other lesser known brands have also been trying to diversify their products to share the remaining modest market share.

The ad campaigns launched by the three biggest brands alone can show the stiff competition of the enterprises. Right after Nestcafe launched the slogan “Khoi dau ngay moi” (start a new day), Vinacafe launched the slogan “Ca phe thien nhien thuan khiet” (pure natural coffee).

Tung from Vinacafe said that Vinacafe would continue making investment in technologies to maintain its competitiveness – the high quality of products. Besides, Vinacafe would also make investment in research and development, marketing and sale.

He also said that the processing capacity of Vinacafe would increase significantly from the third quarter of 2012, when it puts the new coffee processing plant with the capacity of 3200 tons per annum into operation.

Prior to that, Vinacafe opened a café in Hanoi. The move, in the eyes of branding experts, could be seen as the first step in Vinacafe’s plan to confront Trung Nguyen in café chain development.

While domestic brands G7 and Trung Nguyen are still “dueling”, a foreign coffee brand, MacCoffee, has been quietly preparing for the plan to conquer the Vietnamese market.

In fact, MacCoffee has been present in Vietnam since 1990. However, until 2010, its products, made with the same formula applied to 70 other markets, did not fit the taste of Vietnamese people. Moreover, as the materials were imported from other countries, the prices of MacCoffee were higher than other products, making it unable to compete with other brands.

Analysts also comment that MacCoffee’s market share remains modest due to the company’s business strategy at that time: it just simply explored the market and found out the taste of the Vietnamese consumers.

Not to be outdone by the rivals in the competition, Nescafe is still spending heavily on advertisement campaigns, offering many sales promotion programs, trying to make the brand more friendly by organizing writing and photography contests.

Especially, Nestcafe has launched a lot of new products that fit the taste of consumers in different regions. In 2011, for example, the company spent 270 million dollars to build a plant which allows making both soluble coffee and decaffeinated products for women, so that they can drink coffee but do not lose sleep.